Lima the easy, languorous lady – moisturized,
not bathed. Powdered with desert dust. 
She flutters her gardens at passing callers.
Along her posh avenidas she dazzles with ponciana,
ficus, bougainvillae and hibiscus, hiding
scarcity and age under stunning artifice.

Backstage you find Xerophytic shrubs,
cactus, algarroba and a few palm oases.
The set: coastal desert, almost barren.

In the Andes' foothills la garúa—a mist rising from the sea—
kisses the slopes, softly exploding a dense
belt of flowers on slumbering plants. 

One day I may well tire of velveteen glamour,
lusting instead for sharp young mornings,
scrubbed clean by nightly downpours,
storm-tousled tall grasses, slippery carpets
made from the trees' discarded garb.
                        

Photo credit: Rose Mary Boehm

They came that day, at the end,
when the last American tank
‘parked’ at the edge of the forest 
that bordered on the wheat field
destroyed our roof. When the last kid
with a bazooka slung over his shoulder
couldn’t get off that shot, when the last
old man died of natural causes,
when the din died down, when the white
flags and bedsheets fluttered from the village windows,

they came. Jeeps, planes, tanks,
conquerors of a defeated people. 
Oh, defeated so long ago;
defeated by their own hubris, by their fears,
by their ignorant hatred and by their kindness,
defeated by the lies and the bluster,
by betrayal, cowardice, outrage, and courage,
in the name of those who would be their masters.

There, in the quiet after a mighty storm,
the uncaring field that had seen
a world in flames, was quietly making the wave,
war and peace met in an unholy embrace,
knowing that this was a temporary friendship.